An Investigation of Second Language Task-Based Performance Assessments

by James Dean Brown, Thom Hudson, William Bonk

Drawing on the second language performance assessment item specifications created in Technical Report #18, this volume describes the creation of actual performance assessment instruments and their validation. After briefly reviewing the background to the project, the book explains the test and rating scale development processes and the administration of the resulting seven-task tests to 90 students in Hawai'i and Japan.

256 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2002

About the author

James Dean Brown, Professor on the graduate faculty of the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, specializes in the areas of language testing, curriculum design, program evaluation, and research methods.

Professor Brown has taught extensively in France, the People's Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States (in California, Florida, and Hawaii). He has served on the editorial boards of the TESOL Quarterly, JALT Journal, and Language Testing as well as on the TOEFL Research Committee, TESOL Advisory Committee on Research, and the Executive Board of TESOL.

In addition to numerous book chapters and articles in TESOL Quarterly, TESOL Matters, Language Learning, Language Testing, Modern Language Journal, JALT Journal, The Language Teacher, System, and RELC Journal, Professor Brown has published a number of books, among them: Understanding Research in Second Language Learning: A teacher's guide to statistics and research design (Cambridge, 1988; also in a Chinese version, 2001, People’s Education Press); The Elements of Language Curriculum: A systematic approach to program development (Heinle & Heinle, 1995); Language Testing in Japan (with Yamashita, JALT, 1995); Testing in Language Programs (Prentice-Hall, 1996; also translated into Japanese in 1999 by Wada, Taishukan Shoten Publishers); New Ways of Classroom Assessment (TESOL, 1998); Using Surveys in Language Programs (Cambridge, 2001); and Criterion-Referenced Language Testing (with Hudson, Cambridge, 2002).